It was about the 12th of August that they left Mackinaw,
and pursued the usual route by Green Bay, Fox and
Wisconsin rivers, to Prairie du Chien, and thence
down the Mississippi to St. Louis, where they landed
on the 3d of September.

CHAPTER XIV.

St. Louis.—­Its Situation.—­Motley
Population.—­French Creole Traders
and Their Dependants.—­Missouri Fur Company—­
Mr. Manuel Lisa.—­Mississippi Boatmen.—­Vagrant
Indians. —­Kentucky Hunters—­Old
French Mansion—­Fiddling—­Billiards
—­Mr. Joseph Miller—­His Character—­Recruits—­Voyage
Up the Missouri.—­Difficulties of the
River.—­Merits of Canadian Voyageurs.-Arrival
at the Nodowa.—­Mr. Robert M’Lellan
joins the Party—­John Day, a Virginia
Hunter. Description of Him. —­Mr.
Hunt Returns to St. Louis.

St. Louis, which is situated on the right bank of
the Mississippi River, a few miles below the mouth
of the Missouri, was, at that time, a frontier settlement,
and the last fitting-out place for the Indian trade
of the Southwest. It possessed a motley population,
composed of the creole descendants of the original
French colonists; the keen traders from the Atlantic
States; the backwoodsmen of Kentucky and Tennessee;
the Indians and half-breeds of the prairies; together
with a singular aquatic race that had grown up from
the navigation of the rivers—­the “boatmen
of the Mississippi”—­who possessed
habits, manners, and almost a language, peculiarly
their own, and strongly technical. They, at that
time, were extremely numerous, and conducted the chief
navigation and commerce of the Ohio and the Mississippi,
as the voyageurs did of the Canadian waters; but,
like them, their consequence and characteristics are
rapidly vanishing before the all-pervading intrusion
of steamboats.

The old French houses engaged in the Indian trade
had gathered round them a train of dependents, mongrel
Indians, and mongrel Frenchmen, who had intermarried
with Indians. These they employed in their various
expeditions by land and water. Various individuals
of other countries had, of late years, pushed the
trade further into the interior, to the upper waters
of the Missouri, and had swelled the number of these
hangers-on. Several of these traders had, two
or three years previously, formed themselves into
a company, composed of twelve partners, with a capital
of about forty thousand dollars, called the Missouri
Fur Company; the object of which was, to establish
posts along the upper part of that river, and monopolize
the trade. The leading partner of this company
was Mr. Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard by birth, and a man
of bold and enterprising character, who had ascended
the Missouri almost to its source, and made himself
well acquainted and popular with several of its tribes.
By his exertions, trading posts had been established,
in 1808, in the Sioux country, and among the Aricara
and Mandan tribes; and a principal one, under Mr.
Henry, one of the partners, at the forks of the Missouri.
This company had in its employ about two hundred and
fifty men, partly American and partly creole voyageurs.